Archive/File: people/i/irving.david/libel.suit/transcripts/day014.09
Last-Modified: 2000/07/20
MR RAMPTON: --- page 75 of yesterday's transcript, line 9.
"If you turn to page 11", my Lord, I said, "of the
table", that is Miss Rogers' table, "it says, basing
herself on Professor Evans ... this: '1977, the real TB
47 comes to light. It is discovered by Bergander who
found a reservist Ehrlich who had a copy cited at page 261
of Bergander. Evans describes Bergander as the most
authoritative work', and so on". Then I turn to
. P-74
Mr Irving: "I dare say if you have not read Bergander,
Mr Irving ... you will not be conscious of" ---- And you
interrupted, Mr Irving, and said this: "Well, Gutz
Bergander was a very good friend of mine -- he still is a
very good friend of mine". Question: "Have you read this
1977 book of his?" "I have not, no."
Then, my Lord, on page 178 also in yesterday's
transcript: Question: "Look at Bergander's book. Have
you not read that?" Answer: "No".
A. This is a reference to the Order of the Day, the
Tagesbefehl?
Q. No, no.
A. Well, that was the page you ----
Q. 35,000 was the question.
A. Well ----
Q. Then you said: "I know Bergander very well as a human
being and I respect him as a friend and he is a jolly
decent chap, but I do not put his book in the same
category I put Reichart's book having read Reichart book".
A. I assume that I had read Reichart's book at that time, yes.
Q. Now, was it true or not -- people make mistakes; you might
have forgotten -- when you told me that you had not read
Bergander's book?
A. I have never read Bergander's book.
Q. You have never read it?
. P-75
A. Yes. I may have dipped into it. I may have looked at the
photographs or looked to see what his sources were.
Q. What do we understand when on page 281 of your Dresden
1995 edition, at footnote 10, you tell us that Bergander
-- this is about the ACK-ACK gunners, saying that
Bergander was one of them -- then you say this:
"Bergander subsequently published his own well researched
account of the raids, Dresden, in Luftrieg, Cologne
Q. If you had not read it, how do you know it was well
researched?
A. Because he asked me to help him with the research. That
is why it was well researched. He is a very good friend
of mine. He asked me where he should go to, what
archives. He got all my archives. I give him 8,000 pages
of my paper. It was a well researched book he wrote. He
went beyond what I had done and did further research as I know.
Q. Is it unreasonable for me to suggest on the basis of this
morning's discussions, Mr Irving, that everything you do
not like is either a forgery or you have never seen it before?
A. Well, you put to me specific example of books and said,
"Have you read this?" to which my answer has always been
accurately on oath, "No, I have not read it". We have
. P-76
looked at two documents today in detail, one of which is
the crematorium capacity document which I insist is not
genuine, and nothing that I heard this morning has changed
my mind on that, and that is the only document I intend
impugning in this entire legal action. We have looked at
another document now ----
Q. You have just been having a go at the Muller order of 1st August.
A. Well, that is because I have seen it for the first time,
and every time I look at a document for the first time, my
first instinct, particularly when it is not an original,
but a Gestatnat duplicated copy which comes from an
uncertain provenance with no kind of markings whatsoever,
is it say, "Hello, what is this then?" If my eye
immediately alights on German words that have been spelt
wrong and, as I say, are neither fish nor foul, then that
makes me slightly more nervous about it.
MR JUSTICE GRAY: Well, you backed off that in relation to the
Muller document, did you not?
A. I did not want to waste the court's time, my Lord.
Q. Well, do not worry about that.
A. Well, I appreciate your Lordship's impatience when I start
looking at documents in detail.
Q. No, no, I am not in the least bit impatient. I am
interested to know.
A. No, the reason why I backed off it, my Lord, is because
. P-77
I accepted that Hitler knew about these actions and there
not much point going into that one.
MR RAMPTON: My Lord, I now pass on to something rather more
central which is Mr Irving's utterances on the subject of
Jews, blacks, etc. etc., both public and private.
A. Are we not dealing with Dr Goebbels today then? The
Goebbels diaries?
Q. What has Goebbels got to do with it?
MR JUSTICE GRAY: No, the Goebbels diaries. I think the
answer is yes if we have time.
MR RAMPTON: We will get to Moscow along down the road if we
have time.
A. Well, we have my witness coming tomorrow, Mr Peter Millar.
Q. That is fine. I do not mind. You can interpose him if
I have not finished. I am not troubled about that.
I will certainly finish tomorrow to make room for
Professor Browning on Monday.
MR JUSTICE GRAY: Mr Rampton, may I enquire when these bundles
that have just been handed up were generated, as it were?
MR RAMPTON: I think they came into court at about 29 minutes
past 10.
MR JUSTICE GRAY: Have they caused you a problem, Mr Irving,
these new bundles?
MR RAMPTON: My Lord, they are not new.
MR JUSTICE GRAY: I appreciate that they are somewhere in some
bundle, but I am just asking Mr Irving if he has found it
. P-78
a problem dealing with two new bundles.
A. Well, are they new? To what degree are they new?
MR JUSTICE GRAY: Well, I think the documents are not new in
the sense that they are probably in one of the other
files, but I am concerned that you are being presented
with newly arranged documents and that may cause you a problem.
A. My Lord, my concern is not being presented with the big
bundles. I am very concerned about these little
catalogues of excerpts that they are presenting your
Lordship with, which appear to look to me not so much like
case management as case manipulation.
MR RAMPTON: It is perfectly all right, Mr Irving. Everybody
has the full text. You are perfectly free to refer to the
full text or ask the judge to read the full text if you
should be suspicious.
A. Well, I think ----
Q. If we had not -- Mr Irving, please -- had done this bundle
of extracts, we shall be here until next Christmas.
A. Yes, but we have seen the kind of policy that the Defence
uses when it makes their extracts and excerpts. There is
one passage by Professor Evans where "..." stands for 86
words and four sentences and three full stops and two or
three semicolons.
MR JUSTICE GRAY: Well, as we go through, Mr Irving, will you
say when you think the context ----
. P-79
A. Well, it is very difficult ----
Q. --- puts a different gloss on what you are recorded as
having said.
A. It is very difficult just on the basis of the catalogue
that they are going to leave your Lordship with.
MR JUSTICE GRAY: I have not yet digested what I am being
presented with because I have not seen these.
MR RAMPTON: What your Lordship is being presented with is, in
effect, our selection of those passages all from
Mr Irving's own documents and his own words -- nobody
else's words, just his own words -- of those passages
which best represent -- they are by no means exhaustive --
what we say is Mr Irving's underlying frame of mind. This
is the only neat way we could think of doing it without
scuttling about from one file to another and from one page
within the file to another.
Mr Irving is a very wordy person and many of
these transcripts are very long.
MR JUSTICE GRAY: I think I did ask at an earlier stage for a
marked up version and I have now got that.
MR RAMPTON: You did, and your Lordship has three things.
First of all, the original unvarnished speeches, etc. etc.
in the various D files. Then your Lordship has what your
Lordship first asked for which is a marked up copy of the
important passages in those files, but those have now been
transferred into the other two files. Finally, what has
. P-80
happened is that for ease of reference and to make
everybody's life simple, we have extracted those passages
on which we rely. It is as simple as that.
MR JUSTICE GRAY: And that is that, is it?
MR RAMPTON: And that is that. This is going to be a long job anyway.
A. Well, let us see how we proceed, my Lord, is probably the
answer, but I have waved a little red flag.
MR JUSTICE GRAY: If you find yourself in difficulties, then
just say so.
A. It is not the difficulties, my Lord, it is the little
catalogue of excerpts, the manipulation that is going on,
that concerns me.
Q. Well, let us wait and see whether that is right or wrong.
A. If I were to do this with my books, I would be in deep
trouble and justifiably so.
MR RAMPTON: Can I start on the first page of the text of this,
please, under the heading "Anti-Semitism, the Holocaust",
subheading -- these are our headings, I hasten to add, not
yours. "Jewish responsibility for anti-Semitism pogroms,
Holocaust".
On 12th July 1997, your action report, "A
Radical's Diary" is recorded as having expressed this
thought ----
A. What page are we on?
Q. It is page 3 at the bottom of the page. Every single one
. P-81
of these passages is referenced. Top of the page, I think
it has a 11/A in square brackets.
A. What bundle am I supposed to be looking at?
MR JUSTICE GRAY: This little one, I think.
MR RAMPTON: It is a small quote. Some of them, I am afraid,
are much longer. If you would not mind looking at the
little bundle?
MR JUSTICE GRAY: I am sure he has it. Have you got this,
Mr Irving?
A. I do not think so.
MR RAMPTON: My Lord, Mr Irving was given one.
MR JUSTICE GRAY: Was he? Anyway, he has another one.
A. I strongly object to this kind of excerpting. You are
taking a sentence out of, I do not know what, a long
article or a speech or something.
MR JUSTICE GRAY: We can look at them. We have them here. But
let Mr Rampton ask his question and then we will look at
the context.
MR RAMPTON: Mr Irving, can I suggest that every time you think
we have tried to distort the record ----
A. "Manipulate" is the word I used.
Q. Yes, great, "manipulate the record" -- I must remember
that -- for the purposes of presenting a skewed picture to
the court, please mark beside whichever quote I refer to
"check" because then when you reexamine yourself you can
show his Lordship how bad our manipulation has been.
. P-82
A. Can I ask that each time we open the full speech first and
then find what you are taking the excerpt from?
MR JUSTICE GRAY: No, Mr Evans, but what we can do is have
Mr Rampton ask his question and if part of your answer is,
"Oh, well, you have taken it out of context, then we will
look". I think that is the right way of proceeding.
MR RAMPTON: But you have plenty of time to check whether we
have taken it out of context, Mr Irving. The full
speeches are in those two files.
A. Well, this is going to be a very long procedure.
MR JUSTICE GRAY: Right. Let us make a start.
MR RAMPTON: Yes, but I would rather you did not do it. Let me
say this, I take it that every single extract that I ask
you about you will preface your answer (and so let us take
it as pregnant preface) with the answer, "Ah, yes, but
you must look at the context", all right? Can we proceed
on that basis because if you reply in that way every
single time, we really are going to be here until the cows
come home.
MR JUSTICE GRAY: Mr Rampton, I am bound to say -- I am sorry,
this debate is going on and on -- I do think if he says in
relation to any of your questions, "Well, yes, that is
what I said but look at what I said immediately
afterwards", he must be entitled to make that part of his
answer to you.
MR RAMPTON: Of course, if he wishes to do so.
. P-83
MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes, right.

This site is intended for educational purposes to teach about the Holocaust and
to combat hatred.
Any statements or excerpts found on this site are for educational purposes only.

As part of these educational purposes, Nizkor may
include on this website materials, such as excerpts from the writings of racists and antisemites. Far from approving these writings, Nizkor condemns them and
provides them so that its readers can learn the nature and extent of hate and antisemitic discourse. Nizkor urges the readers of these pages to condemn racist
and hate speech in all of its forms and manifestations.